Type of Auditory cues and Apparatus influence how Healthy Young Adults Integrate Sounds for Dynamic Balance

Description

(16 females, aged 19–36) were asked to avoid a ball according to a specific visual rule. Visuals were projected from the HTC Vive head-mounted display in an acoustically controlled space. We varied the environment by adding congruent or incongruent sounds as well as creating a multimodal (visual and congruent sounds) vs. unimodal (visual or congruent sounds only) display of stimuli. Sounds were played over headphones or loudspeakers. We quantified Reaction Time (RT) and Accuracy (choosing the correct direction to move) by capturing the head movement. We found that in the absence of sounds, RT was slower with headphones compared to loudspeakers, but the introduction of either congruent or incongruent sounds resulted in faster movements with headphones compared to the silent condition. Participants utilized congruent sounds to improve accuracy but were able to disregarded incongruent sounds such that their performance was not hindered regardless of the apparatus. Participants leveraged sounds played over loudspeakers, but not over headphones, to enhance accuracy in a unimodal dark environment (i.e., sound only).

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